Introducing the Meat Based Carrot

By Jim Mundorf

 We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball... What bothers me isn’t that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? 

— -The Big Short

Fraud /frôd/: intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

A while back Goldman Sachs called "Meatless Meats, one of the hottest emerging trends." There's just one problem. As you might have guessed, "meatless meats" don't exist anymore than carless cars, dirtless dirt, or moneyless money. What they really meant was fake meat, but being clear about their recommendations isn't exactly Goldman's strong suit. Over the last year the animal rights activist investors seem to have taken over Wall Street and Silicon Valley convincing everybody that fake meat is a great idea. They have also taken over the publications of Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, and anything else an investor might be looking at.

Fake Meat

Right now the only, fake meat on the market is what they call, "plant based meat" which isn't meat at all its mushed up plants, but because eating plants sucks they have to pull a trick and color it, add who knows what to it, and call it meat. Now where I come from, if you try to sell something by calling it something that it isn't, they call that fraud and its illegal. That's not how it works on Wall Street or in investment presentations in Silicon Valley. There you don't have to make sense as long as you can explain your lie with more lies and show a graph that has up arrows on it, they're in.

Fake Vegetables

With all this money being poured into fake meat, it gave me an idea. Instead of taking a food that everyone loves...meat, and making a fake one out of foods that everyone doesn't really love... vegetables. Why not make fake foods...vegetables out of great tasting food... meat? Of course it doesn't make any sense, but that doesn't seem to matter at all anymore. So I'm doing it. I'm all in and here it is. I present you the meat based carrot.

Credit to my mother in law for sculpting the first product for Beyond Impossible Vegetables out of ground beef.

Best looking carrot I've ever laid eyes on. Throw that baby on the grill. Stick it in a hot dog bun, maybe a little ketchup and mustard and its the tastiest carrot the world has ever known, but don't you go calling it a hot dog, or hamburger, or anything else besides a carrot because that is what it is. A delicious healthy carrot. And that's just the beginning, I'm gonna be making all kinds of great tasting veggies out of meat. My next product, I think will be a bacon based lettuce. Imagine that salad. No dressing required. Just a bowl full of beautiful, succulent bacon leaves.

I haven't completely decided on a name yet but in honor of the two fakest meat companies, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, I'm leaning towards, Beyond Impossible Vegetables. It has a nice fraudulent ring to it. I've always wondered how someone who works at Beyond Meats explains where they work. I would guess it goes something like this:

Where do you work?

Beyond Meats.

Oh a meat company?

Well, its plant based meats.

Oh, so its meat with plants in it?

Well, actually there's no meat at all.

But the word, meat, is in the name of the company?

Anyway back to my carrot. I started with the carrot because it was the easiest thing to shape out of ground beef. And don't worry about that green stuff on top that's just part of the packaging to add to the fakeness of it all (pulled from a plant my wife had on the counter.) One of the things I've learned from the fake meat folks, is, the faker the better. Don't be afraid to really fraud up your fraud. Both Impossible and Beyond meats claim that their mushed up plant burgers, "bleed." No one makes plants bleed their own blood...no one. Because plants don't have blood, they can't bleed. I am quickly learning you can never let the truth get in the way of your lies, no matter how ridiculous.

I'm thinking about spray painting my carrot orange to add to it. I'm sure its safe. And don't worry about getting FDA approval. From looking into the fake meat companies I've learned that the only person who needs to say that it is safe to eat is me. According to Maxwell Arnolds article in Forbes, How The 'Impossible Burger' Revealed Some Disturbing FDA Practices. “Even though the FDA specifically disapproved of the Impossible Burger’s key ingredient (soy leghemoglobin) for human consumption, expressing concerns that it may be an allergen, it came to light that the FDA’s approval was never even required in the first place, since food manufacturers can self-affirm ingredients as being safe under the agency’s GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) program. According to Pew Charitable Trusts, the FDA is unaware of some 1,000 out of 10,000 ingredients used in food, because companies self-affirmed their safety.” So I'm thinking if I do go with the spray paint, I'll be, "self-affirming". After over a year of selling a product that the FDA wouldn't approve, and begging, pleading and lobbying the FDA, Impossible Burger did get the GRAS approval. I can't find any FDA info on Beyond Meat so I'm going to assume, like me, they're self affirming their fake products are safe as well.

Marketing Strategy

The first thing I need to do is come up with some way to convince people that vegetables are destroying the environment. That is what the fake meat people have done with animals and it seems to have worked out for them early on. Back when no one had actually studied the issue they just said it and people believed them. On the home page of Beyond Meats website they state that, "51 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions driven by livestock rearing and processing." First of all, who rears livestock anymore? But seriously, can you imagine after all we have heard about emissions, fossil fuels, and greenhouse gases over the years they are saying livestock are responsible for over half of greenhouse gases! That 51 percent number comes from a study, put out 10 years ago, that is so full of BS even the vegans can no longer stand by it. Since it is so obviously ridiculous, the same people that were promoting that number have toned it down to 18 percent now, which is still wrong, but the 51 percent remains on Beyond Meats website along with all the other lies. When your entire product is a lie, the best thing for business is more lies. Animals are destroying the environment, just say that out loud and listen to how stupid you sound. Anyway, if there is a good con-artist out there that can come up with some fake research about how vegetables are destroying the environment, let me know.

To start advertising I figure I will target the Vegan community. They are apparently the biggest suckers on the planet and will believe anything. And you know they are jonesing for some meat, but don't forget I'm not selling meat, but vegetables. These will be the best vegetables they've ever tasted. Those scrawny little bastards take one bite of my carrot they won't know what hit em. I'm working on a slogan like, "Imagine eating vegetables and no longer having to take supplements to keep your hair and teeth from falling out." A little wordy but I'm working on it.

Investors Wanted

The best thing about being a new, "growth" type company is you never have to make a profit, you don't even have to pretend like you want to. That is what Beyond Meat has done and they've been given $72 million in investments, Entrepreneur magazine wrote about it here, With $72 Million in Funding, the Entrepreneur Behind Beyond Meat Pursues Innovation Over Profit. That's my plan, "innovation over profit." Kind of takes the pressure off. Especially when you are given millions for it.

I figure my first stop will be Tyson Foods. They love fake meat. They have invested in multiple lab meat companies and are also a 5% owner of Beyond Meat. Think about that, a meat packing company owns 5 percent of a fake meat company, whose main goal is to take market share away from meat. So why should anything have to make sense for them to invest in it.

Then I will head for Wall Street and silicon valley, they are always game for some good old fashioned fraud. I figure I will get me that graph with the arrow pointing up and use words like, trending, technology and growth and they will be all in. If there is one thing these tech billionaires love its growth stocks that have never come close to making a profit. It shouldn't be hard to show that my sales will soon be growing. My meat veggies are a brand new product there's only one way to go.

Where to Buy Beyond Impossible Vegetables

Once again Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have lead the way in showing how accepting of fake products the retail world is. The first stop is Whole Paycheck...I mean Whole Foods. That place is home to the biggest suckers around. Fake Meat is also sold in Walmart, Target, Krogers and even beef country's own Hyvee. These stores do their best to join right in on the fraud. They put the mushed up plants, that are packaged to look just like meat, right into their meat aisles just like it is meat. So I figure they will have no problem putting my carrots that will be packaged like carrots right next to the other carrots. If you're looking for carrots to buy and you see one labeled meat based, whose not going to pick that one? Nobody.

Restaurants are also showing they are game for some fake food selling too, TGI Fridays, Dave and Busters, Charlestons. Wouldn't a plate full of, "plant based meat" and meat based vegetables make perfect sense? Even fast food joints like, A &W, and White Castle are all now carrying some fake meat. So I'm sure they will want some fake vegetables to go along with it. Could you imagine some stoner vegans chowing down on my meat based carrots at a White Castle? They will think they died and went to heaven.

To Be Honest

Well now that I've made my carrot and put together my plans, something does feel a little off. I come from a long line of farmers and livestock producers. I'm not a natural crook so, this isn't easy. All this carrot talk reminds me of when I used to pull carrots out of my Grandparents garden, brush the dirt off and take a bite. The best meat I've ever tasted came from the animals raised on our farm. The ground beef used to make my carrot is from an animal that I helped raise. Something just doesn't seem right about taking such a pure honest product and lying about it. Farming and ranching have always been the most honest work to me, but now these professions are being vilified. They say meat is killing people and destroying the environment. They do it to advance their animal rights agenda, to put livestock producers out of business, to promote veganism, to make money. Now the only way to save the world is to stop eating real food and start eating fake food. Its the lie that I just can't wrap my head around how they got anyone to believe it. I've been told I'm too nostalgic, and I suppose, I am.

I miss the days when food could be food, plants could be plants, meat could be meat, and people could be honest.

Jim Mundorf is a 5th generation farmer and rancher and owns operates The Drover House, droverhouse.com